


A Series of Peculiar Circumstances

by cywscross



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Gen, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-01
Packaged: 2018-09-03 14:40:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8717836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cywscross/pseuds/cywscross
Summary: Secrets are a funny thing. They always come out sooner or later.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Welp, here it is, my last assignment for my CW class. It's... less detailed than I wanted it because I had to cut out some stuff to make it fit six pages (six and a half actually, I really hope I don't get marks docked off for that), and the story arc's a little different in that I drew out the reveal until the very end with only a few clues along the way and background worldbuilding that I hope gets across some idea of this universe. Enjoy. Hopefully.
> 
>  **Fanart:** https://trippuchi.tumblr.com/post/156088077455/ok-so-this-how-i-headcanon-these-really-cool

 

There’s an icy bite in the air as Shara heads home for the day. She never takes her gloves off in public but she wonders if she should invest in another pair to wear over them.

Other students bustle by with sporadic glances up at the grey skies. Shara picks up her pace. It doesn’t take a peculiarity to sense that the weather’s about to take a turn for the worse.

It takes three minutes to reach her dorm building, only to find her RA already standing just inside the door, one eye on his phone, the other on the world outside, and he opens the door for her when he spots her. At this point, the wind is blowing so hard, Chris actually has to brace his feet to keep it open long enough for Shara to slip through, and it bangs shut behind her with an ominous rattle of glass the moment Chris lets go. Inside, Shara wipes half-heartedly at the thin layer of frost on her clothes. All that serves to do is soak her gloves.

“Good, you’re the last one,” Chris tells her, handing her a towel before checking a clipboard with one hand and locking the door with the other. “I’m putting the building on lockdown. There’s a blizzard coming in…” He squints outside for a moment. “-twenty-seven minutes, and it’s gonna be a bad one, so nobody’s going outside again until it blows over.”

“People can still climb out their window,” Shara has to point out, because the fire escape attached to this building is great for escaping fires, sneaking out (or in), and burglary.

Chris snorts. “They won’t if they don’t want to freeze to death. This storm’s no joke.”

Chris’ peculiarity lets him know the approach of a storm up to seventy-two hours away, and he’s never been wrong, so she isn’t about to doubt him, especially when they’re not exactly short on evidence.

Her nose itches, and a second later, a sneeze bursts out of her. Chris rolls his eyes and reaches out like he wants to feel her forehead, but then he thinks better of it and retracts his hand. In the end, he just sighs and pats her lightly on the head instead. “Go shower and change. Finals are in two weeks and you don’t want to get sick right before those.”

Shara nods and bids Chris a goodnight. A hot shower does sound heavenly right now.

 

* * *

  

Her plans are derailed thirty-eight minutes later when, in the process of boiling water and listening to the angry shriek of wind battering against her small kitchenette window, Shara picks up a muted clanging coming from… She sits up and strains her ears, frowning. That’s not the storm, but it’s still coming from outside. On her fire escape to be exact. She gets to her feet and fetches the baseball bat her brother gave her a year ago before she left for college.

As it turns out, she doesn’t actually need it. It takes her five seconds of peering through a perpetual whiteout to recognize the two people huddled outside, one of whom is knocking a water bottle against the railing. And as soon as he realizes he’s been noticed, Shara’s next-door neighbour starts making complicated gestures that she guesses is supposed to mean _let us in!_

She heaves a sigh and sets aside the bat before unlocking her window and shoving it open. Her flimsy pajamas do nothing to prevent the chill from seeping right through, and she ends up snapping impatiently, “Hurry up!”

The first gets through without trouble, but the second – the one who was knocking – trips over the windowsill in his haste and falls right into her with a muttered curse.

Anyone else probably wouldn’t have cared beyond some annoyance. Shara on the other hand tries to throw herself back because she’s in her dorm room and her gloves are still drying and she’s wearing a goddamn t-shirt that leaves her arms _completely bare_ , but since the universe has never seen fit to give her a break, she isn’t able to move away fast enough before Next-Door Neighbour crashes into her, topples them both to the ground, and consequently smacks the back of one of his hands into her forearm before Shara can even think about shouting a warning.

Shara reels back, eyes widening as Next-Door Neighbour wheezes out an apology and starts pulling away, and then Other Next-Door Neighbour is there, glaring as he drags his friend away from her and shoves her away with one wet sneaker for good measure. Shara flinches from the kick to her hip and glowers right back even as she scrambles away, hastily snatching up a spare sweater on the back of the couch and pulling it on.

Next-Door Neighbour’s head swings around, and he yanks his arm out of his roommate’s grip, simultaneously stepping in front of Shara. “Dude! What the _fuck?_ ”

Roommate sneers. “I went to high school with her, Kes. There was an incident, and some government lady came and made sure we kept our traps shut about her trick, to keep _her_ safe, but trust me when I say you don’t want her touching you.”

Next-Door Neighbour stares from Shara to Roommate and back again. Shara widens her scowl to include him too.

“Get out,” She snaps. “You can use the door, or I can toss you back out the window.”

Roommate scoffs. “As if you could.”

Shara smiles sweetly at him, all teeth as she reaches for her bat. “You’re right. A kneecapping is easier.”

Roommate twitches. He still looks kind of doubtful but he marches for the door all the same, leaving dirty slush all across her floor. She should’ve left them both outside.

Next-Door Neighbour is still blinking at her. Shara arches an imperious eyebrow at him.

“I should help you clean up,” He finally points out, and Shara has to wrinkle her nose at both the condition of her floor and her open window. She quickly closes it, muffling the snowstorm once more despite the chill that’s now battling against her heater for dominance.

“Kestrel, come on,” Roommate says from the door. “Let’s get outta here.”

Next-Door Neighbour – Kestrel, apparently – goes, especially under Shara’s pointed glare, though he keeps glancing back at her right up until the door finally shuts behind him.

Shara blows out a breath and rubs her forehead before taking another look at the mess around her. Her kettle begins whistling a second later, and she sighs before making her over to fish out some ramen. Might as well clean on a full stomach.

Of course, she can’t even do that in peace. Ten minutes later, there’s a knock at her door, and somehow, she isn’t surprised to see Kestrel standing there in dry clothes with an armful of towels in his arms. He flashes her a winning grin, says “It’s Shara, right? I’m here to help clean!”, and before Shara can threaten him with violence, he’s breezing past her into the room, pressing forward in a way that makes Shara back up and let him or risk touching him again. He manages to mop up half her floor before she finds her voice. “I don’t need your help.”

“Well I kinda got that the first time,” Kestrel agrees, glancing at her baseball bat. “But Mike was an asshole even after you let us in so I thought I should make it up to you.”

Shara narrows her eyes at him. “You also thought you’d ask about my peculiarity.”

She supposes it’s to his credit that he doesn’t pretend not to know what she’s talking about. He’s already nodding along like an idiot, except his eyes are sharp on her face, acute curiosity in every line of his face.

“Can’t be empathy,” He remarks, distractedly scrubbing at a dirty scuff mark. “Those are a dime a dozen and the government wouldn’t send silencers for that. So come on, what’s your trick? I promise I won’t tell.”

Shara’s eyebrows alone must convey the sheer amount of utter disbelief she’s feeling because Kestrel coughs a little and shrugs. “Well, okay, fair. You don’t know me, you don’t have to tell me. Just… if you got something from me,” He wiggles his fingers like some third-rate magician, and Shara wonders if she can get away with punching him in the face or something just to make him stop. “Which, alright, my fault, not yours, but I should probably know, right?”

Shara stays stubbornly silent. Kestrel starts wiping down her windowsill. It’s weird. She’s never had anyone just outright ask before. They either demanded or avoided her like the plague after they found out. Of course, Kestrel hasn’t found out yet. That’s sort of the point.

But she thinks about what she learned in the few seconds they were touching. Thinks about the way Kestrel automatically rounded on his… She can’t even call that other boy ‘friend’. Because they’re not. She heard _that_ very clearly.

“What’s yours then?” She mutters at last, toeing one of the towels to sponge up the last of the water by the door. “Your peculiarity? You can’t go to this school without one.”

Kestrel grins. “Yeah, but mine’s nothing special. I just talk to cats.”

Shara stares. “And your name is _Kestrel?_ ”

Kestrel’s grin widens. “The rest of my family has a thing for birds. Mom, owls. Dad, falcons. I got a brother who speaks seagull and a sister who speaks sparrow.” His mouth twists oddly. “Used to have a little brother who spoke blue jay.” Shara very carefully doesn’t ask. “I was the odd one out. My folks still can’t decide if my trick is more hilarious or horrifying.”

He gives the dry windowsill a satisfied onceover before wandering back over. Shara waits for the inevitable _now your turn, tell me yours_ , but Kestrel just begins gathering up all the used towels, clearly preparing to leave. “Well, I guess I’ll get outta your hair now-”

“Secrets,” Shara cuts him off, tipping her chin up somewhat defiantly when Kestrel turns to look at her. “I touch you and I hear your secrets. Or make you tell me your secrets. Most important to least.” She smiles grimly. “I lost my temper with someone back in high school. It was an accident, but long story short, I had her singing like a canary for an hour. She spilled every secret she had, from cheating on her biology test to knowing she was adopted, and even I couldn’t make it stop. So you can see why _I’m_ here.”

Because this is a special school, for anyone born with a peculiarity. The students get protection from anyone who might try to abduct them and use them, but for the ones who are more… useful on the trick spectrum, well. Let’s just say there’s an office in a government building somewhere with Shara’s name on it no matter what she majors in or how well she does.

“Ah,” Kestrel says after a long minute of tense silence. His eyes dart from her to the wall separating their respective dorm rooms and then back to her. “So…”

“I got one secret from you,” Shara says bluntly, discreetly checking that her bat’s within arm’s length of her. “Yes, it’s probably the one you’re thinking of.”

Kestrel goes very still, and his expression is dark in a way Shara didn’t think he was capable of. “…And?”

“And what?” She retorts, hiding how uneasy she feels. “ _He’s_ not the one I touched.”

The towels fall to the ground with a wet thump. Kestrel takes a step towards her, and then a step back, hands raised, when Shara twitches for her bat, but his gaze never wavers from her.

“Okay,” He says in tones so calm he has to be anything but. “So if I drag him over here-”

There’s a thunk from the other side of the wall, and then rapid footsteps, and then Kestrel is flinging himself at Shara’s door, gone in a split second, followed by another door slamming open, and then a shout, a crash, glass breaking, and the unmistakeable thuds of two people trying to beat the crap out of each other. By the time Shara gets next door, the rest of the building is awake, and Chris is striding up the hall wearing sweats and a thunderous expression, but Shara’s attention is all on Kestrel, who – despite the busted lip and black eye – has clearly come out on top and currently has his roommate – broken nose and all – in a vicious headlock.

Kestrel looks up with a grin half a shade from crazed, but some of it ebbs when he catches sight of her. “Can you do it? Please?”

“The fuck is going on here?” Chris snarls. Before today, as Shara’s brother’s best friend, he was the only one in the building who knew what Shara’s peculiarity is, and even if he doesn’t know why Kestrel is asking, he’s certainly not too stupid to figure out _what_ Kestrel is asking Shara to do. “You two called to say you were staying at a friends’ house! And now you’re-”

Shara nudges him with a sweater-covered elbow. “Chris, it’s fine.”

She doesn’t wait for a reply, taking a deep breath instead before making her way forward and crouching down beside the pair on the floor. She studies both of them for a moment. Kestrel smiles and pins one of Mike’s flailing limbs down. Shara sighs, then she extends one bare finger and taps the back of that hand.

It only takes a moment. Still, she has to close her eyes at the onslaught of words, more panic over being caught than any kind of guilt.

She opens her eyes and pulls away. She meets Kestrel’s burning gaze. She nods once.

Kestrel looks down. Mike is still struggling weakly, but underneath the blotchy red of his face, the terror is unmistakeable. Shara gets to her feet and retreats back to Chris’ scowling side.

“Best call the police,” She murmurs, then adds delicately, “For murder.”

Chris looks from her to the two on the ground before pinching the bridge of his nose. “Jesus fucking Christ.” Then he pulls out his phone and does exactly that.

 

* * *

  

It’s front-page news the next morning:

**_Michael Dumont Arrested for Hit-and-Run Cold Case_ **

There’s a knock on her door. She isn’t surprised to see Kestrel, although, “Shouldn’t you be on a flight home by now?”

Kestrel smiles at her, and it’s a far cry from the mad fury of last night. “Flight’s delayed because of the weather. I should be able to head out tomorrow though. Here.” He thrusts one of the drinks in his hands at her. “Apology coffee. I figured I should get started on that considering it’s my fault you’ll be called in to testify.”

Shara snorts but accepts the drink. Their fingers brush, and she gets a whisper of _if I ever get another minute alone with him_ that feels like the stab of a knife. If Kestrel notices, he doesn’t seem to care, and for a while, they sit in mostly comfortable silence on the couch in her tiny dorm room.

“I never asked,” Shara says abruptly. “What was his peculiarity? I know you always thought that was the reason nobody even suspected him. Not even you. Your mind wasn’t suspicious of _him_. You were suspicious of his _peculiarity_.”

Kestrel huffs a laugh that doesn’t sound very amused. “Had to be, or I’d forget. Mike’s trick is a subtler one. People still don’t know how to tell when someone is using their peculiarity when it’s not as flashy as ours can be.”

Shara frowns in bemusement. Kestrel smiles.

“Handiest trick in the world – to lie and make anyone believe it.”

 


End file.
